Achenblog: August 14, 2005 - August 20, 2005

Traveling in California is dangerous, because you start having real estate investment fantasies. Something about the air, the light, the golden hills, it makes you turn your face to the sun, take a deep breath, and think: I...

Visited a huge oil drilling rig that has been detoured into geology research. I put on a hard hat, safety goggles, and steel-toed boots (unlike the White House, this isn't a place where it's customary to wear sandals),...

At Point Lobos, near Carmel, there's a type of coarse sedimentary rock embedded with stones, fist-sized and larger, obviously smoothed and rounded by water. It's called the Carmelo Formation. The helpful brochure explains that these stones fell into...

I was driving down California Highway One late yesterday when the fog and night rolled in. Suddenly it was no longer a scenic highway, but rather a shockingly elaborate plot to get me killed. Lots of hairpin turns, precipitous...